The usefulness of Information technology (IT) in many business operations is well established. Correspondingly, IT operations may be dependent upon the behavior of business transactions. Customer satisfaction can result from business transactions that are successfully, reliably and quickly completed. This can result in increased revenues and lowered operating costs.
As transactions become increasing complex, it becomes more difficult to provide smooth interaction and integration of affected resources. Business transaction management (BTM) is an area of IT that includes monitoring and analyzing computerized business transactions, network intrusion detection, and network management. This can involve tracing transactions through the sometimes complex network structure and monitoring the flow of messages between network components.
When a data agent is installed on each component in an area of a network to be monitored, the performance of the application monitored may be compromised. This approach also may involve installation of such data agents on a large number of components for tracing transactions involving those components. Where performance is degraded in a monitored application, the data agent may contribute to that degradation. Further, when there is an upgrade or change in the data agents, the applications being monitored are restarted.